is there any advantage/disadvantage of using a gamma linear workflow 1.8 instead of 2.2?
I sometimes use 1.8 if I want a bit more contrast but without losing too much light bouncing round…more for interior scenes obviously. A lot can be done in post though so its really down to personal preference in my opinion.
If you use images for textures (from digital cameras) I think most of them have gamma 2.2 applied so using 2.2 would be closer to the original photos. I agree with what Steve said about post and personal preference. Don’t see any advantages in using 1.8 or 2.2, but as a personal preference I do see an advantage of using gamma correction vs not.
1,1,1, here and I save out as raw
same here, 1,1,1 and save as exr
Why not render each light out as a separate linear pass and gamma correct to suit in post.
This gives you the ultimate control and saves alot of mucking around with gamma, colour correction, curves adjustments and rerenders.
If you ignore all the gamma options and think that you can just change the gamma in post, You’ll end up washing out all your textures. The whole point of the gamma settings is to make sure that you aren’t double gamma-ing your textures.
If your images are truely linear then you can just do your gamma in post. However, if you got your textures off the web, a digital camera or painted them in photoshop they are not 1.0 gamma and unless you tell Max that, they will get double gamma-ed
1.8 is not linear workflow. It’s a gamma corrected workflow but not linear. Actually a gamma correction of 2.2 is not really converting sRGB to linear, but the difference is very very small.
You cannot gamma correct in post and achieve the same result tho. Light/Shadow distribution as well as color bleeding for example simply render differently in linear space.
You can find some information regarding rendering in linear space on Bill’s excellend Linear vs. sRGB pages
http://mysite.verizon.net/spitzak/conversion/whylinear.html
Regards,
Thorsten
2.2 all the way for me. Works a treat, I also use a syper2Pro to calibrate my monitors.
I recenlty was helping a friend in max with LWF issues, he spent 1/2 a day on a concrete material and couldn’t get it right no matter what he did.
His setting were 1.8 in, 1.8 out (max preferences) Vray color mapping set to gamma - 1.8 plus LWF ticked - omg.